


take me to another moon

by Glassea



Category: The Lorien Legacies - All Media Types, The Lorien Legacies - Pittacus Lore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/M, Gen, Vigilantism, marina-centric as usual, this is basically a collection of worldbuilding drabbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28436130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glassea/pseuds/Glassea
Summary: “I don’t want to be a hero,” Marina tells him, voice perfectly even, but she feels like the lie is crawling out of her skin, writing itself all over her face.(or: there are nine superpowered vigilantes in New York City, and Marina is the seventh.)
Relationships: (implied/eventual), Marina | Number Seven/Naveen | Number Eight
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3





	take me to another moon

**Author's Note:**

> no I haven't read past the fall of five. yes I am still a Marina Stan™. yes I consider myself a valid member of this fandom. We Exist.
> 
> title from fromis_9's _Feel Good_.

Marina has had her powers for a long time. Even when she was much younger, in her toddler years, she has faint recollections of scraping a knee and then watching unbroken skin grow back over the raw red. Back then her abilities weren't as noticeable, much less dramatic, and Marina was a shy child to begin with; she always faded into the woodwork. Now she's thankful for that, because she's pretty sure if anyone back then knew about her powers she'd be a science experiment now. No one would miss another quiet girl from the foster system.

Marina was an intelligent child. She knew that her healing was unusual. She'd watched other people get hurt and when they didn't recover as quickly as she always did, she knew that she wasn't quite normal. She wasn't quite  _ human _ .

Her other powers weren't as easy for her to recognize. Marina didn't know that to other children, the dark was impenetrable instead of translucent. She didn't realize that most people couldn't stay underwater for longer than a few minutes.

She used to think it's a special kind of person who has these abilities.

Her first experience fighting neighborhood crime is imprinted in her mind more firmly than her own name. Marina didn't wake up that morning planning to do anything out of the ordinary; it just happened.

Marina has a moral compass, and it wavers sometimes, but stays steady for the most part. If she sees someone being mugged in a dark alley at nine at night, even if she's only thirteen, she's going to do everything in her power to stop them. That's a given. And so maybe braining someone with the lid of a trash can isn't exactly the most heroic thing in the world, but if it gets the job done…

Marina had stood over the dark figure, half of her shocked and frozen at what she'd just done, the other half moving on instinct alone, poking the body with her toe to make sure he was down for the count. The woman against the wall was gasping for breath, and that was the only sound to break through the white noise in Marina's ears. Her body was in a dreamlike state at that point. It was with robotic movements that she asked whether the victim was alright - and she was uninjured, which was good - and her fingers weren't quite aware as they stabbed 9-1-1 on the woman's borrowed cell.

It was only when she got back to her temporary residence and was appropriately scolded by her current foster mother (Cat Lady, Marina calls her, after the three cats she cares for more than her foster kids) that she realized how she'd felt during those adrenaline-filled minutes. It's a heady rush, to save a life; it was one she'd never felt the likes of before, and Marina couldn't help but long for the feeling, an addict after only one dose.

After that, it's only natural for her to begin volunteering at the local hospital. At this point she's no longer living with Cat Lady, but instead with a kindergarten teacher named Adelina who teaches at some fancy private school. Adelina isn't half bad. The woman is hosting only Marina at the moment and doesn't really care what her ward does after school as long as it's not illegal. (Her activities aren’t illegal yet.)

The hospital is great, almost cathartic, but it's not the same as actually being out there and helping on the front lines. Marina changes bedpans and reads to patients and tries to heal some of the children in the terminal illness ward and when they cite miraculous recoveries she just smiles. But even with all that, Marina thinks she could do better as a first responder. She could help people before they were rushed through the doors of the ER with blood smeared over too-pale skin. It makes her angry that this even happens, and that she can't be out there to ease pain, to save lives before they bleed out through knife wounds onto dirty concrete.

Marina wishes she could do  _ something _ .

She has never been sensitive to cold. The numb feeling is, in Marina’s opinion, far preferable to pain.

When she was younger she never played in the snow. To desecrate the pure blanket was something she found offensive, like dancing on a grave. She would simply stand, face tilted towards a gray sky, eyes closed and lips a dusky blue as the wind shivered its way through her small frame. No, the cold has never been of consequence.

It takes her a while, months of constant work at her powers, to recognize that her healing is cold. Marina supposes that it makes sense. If her hands were removing energy from someone’s body, they would grow warm, but when she returns energy, her body grows colder in response. It’s basic physics. And maybe, she thinks, when she looks back on this in the future, the development of her cryokinesis isn’t a surprise. It was only a matter of time before her abilities extended.

There’s really no way to describe the moment when, at a brush of her fingertips, Marina’s changes the substance on her rain-soaked window to ice crystals two centimeters thick. It’s exhilarating and terrifying and so much more all at once. 

Maybe Marina doesn’t actively try to improve her control of the ice, beyond holding back so she doesn’t ice over everything she touches, but she still discovers things. She learns how she can freeze water into pieces of ice that resemble blades. She freezes herself to the ground accidentally and discovers that her ice is much denser - much stronger - than anything man-made. People start to shy away from her, and it takes Marina a little while to realize that it’s because she practically exudes cold.

Maybe Marina doesn’t begin to roam the streets like some vengeful Robin Hood who protects the weak and punishes the rich, but if her time at the library is spent in the nonfiction section perusing martial arts techniques, that’s her business. Everyone should know how to defend themselves, Marina argues, and Adelina agrees to sign her up for practical self-defense classes.

Maybe Marina’s anger at injustice builds with every patient she sees in the hospital, but she doesn’t act on it. (Not yet.)

Maybe Marina is waiting for something - something so wrong that she can’t justify looking away.

She’s just turned sixteen and maybe she’ll be waiting forever.

In the end, she doesn’t wait forever, only three months and two weeks and six days. She’s pretty sure it’s a coincidence, the fact that she’s still awake happens to have her window open at one in the morning when the gunshots carry in the wind.

(Later on, looking back, she doesn’t know why she goes herself instead of calling the police, but she doesn’t dwell on it too much. There are other things –  _ Eight _ – on her mind.)

She takes a plastic water bottle, drops out her window onto the fire escape with a squeal of metal, and she’s never been all that athletic, but she sprints down the stairs anyways. In the end it works out because there’s a cooling unit right under the ladder, and dropping five feet isn’t the most difficult thing she’s ever done. After that it’s easy enough for her to get onto the asphalt. It rained this afternoon, Marina remembers, and the puddles collected in the alley’s dips and valleys should be almost disgustingly warm, but when her bare feet touch the water it’s freezing instead.

Finding the source of the noise isn’t the issue. It’s a known fact that Marina’s neighborhood is not the safest place in the city, so a sound that might be explained as the backfiring of a truck isn’t uncommon. (Marina has to admit that most nights she closes her window and shuts her eyes well before ten in order to insulate herself from the realities of the city outside.) That’s why whoever fired that first shot doesn’t seem to have any issue with firing five more, and Marina’s sprinting down a street she can’t identify in the dark, and yeah, the scene a block down like something straight out of an old Western would be a good place to start looking for the culprit.

Her feet are bare and cut and bleeding and she doesn’t feel it at all, because someone’s lying on the ground, and it  _ rained  _ so it makes sense that there’s a puddle beneath the prone figure, but the air hisses with something metallic that’s definitely not water.

Marina’s attention is caught not by the person in need of medical attention but by the moving figure. At a guess she’d say he’s male, because he’s well over six feet tall, and most women are a bit shorter than that. His height will make his center of gravity significantly elevated, she reasons, and she’s never tried to freeze something so far away before, but she jerks her right hand up and the oil-slicked puddle a few yards ahead of the fleeing culprit obeys, freezing into the crest of a wave that his left foot catches on. He goes sprawling, something metal and gun-shaped skittering from his hand. She’s on him before he can rise. The ice formed from her water bottle rips straight through its plastic container Some shifts from the puddles nearby to slap messily over the man’s wrists, his ankles. His initial struggles tell Marina her ice will hold.

There’s really no need for her to kick him under the chin, right where she knows it’s easiest to hit, to make the brain collide with the inside of the skull, but she does it anyways. She  _ knows _ that the person whose body she ran past won’t be getting up again.

She checks the fallen man’s pulse all the same, but blood coats his wrist, his neck. There’s only her breath stirring the air. When Marina presses her hand to the torn flesh there’s no iciness crawling down her palm and that hurts more than she imagines a gunshot ever could. The sound of distant sirens tears at her ears.

Marina leaves the torn plastic of the water bottle in the trashcan at the mouth of thealley and washes the man’s blood from her hands in Adelina’s second bathroom. There’s scarlet swirling down the drain. When Marina closes her eyes that night it’s like the backs of her eyelids are coated in red.

She knows about the sheer amount of vigilantes in New York. You’d have to live under a rock to not have heard people talking about a masked enforcer’s M.O., to not have seen the graffiti on the walls, to not have heard at least one speech from the chief of police telling them why taking the law into your own hands is a ridiculously terrible idea.

Here’s the thing: neither the police nor Marina were fast enough to save that life, but without Marina there would have been no justice, because the murderer would have gotten away.

If a year ago someone told her that when she was exactly sixteen years and three months and three weeks old she’d be considering vigilantism, she would’ve laughed in their face.

It takes three more criminals pinned down by supernaturally strong ice before the police grudgingly admit that they’ve got yet another superpowered vigilante on their hands.

Marina doesn’t lose anyone else under a coating of blood and shaking hands. They call her a miracle worker, and she feels vaguely guilty about that label, because she’s just a healer. Miracles aren't to be performed by an orphan from Nowhere, Colorado. Miracles don’t belong to her.

It takes four weeks and two more vigilantes before the papers finally give up and, with the endless creativity of journalism,  _ number _ the vigilantes, in order of their first appearance. They put a special in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, a booklet detailing vigilantes One through Nine, their credited arrests, their M.O.s, their appearances, the areas they each cover. She steals the paper almost immediately, and in the safety of her room, she laughs until she cries. She knew she wasn’t alone in her unusual pursuit of justice. It’s still an amazing feeling to know that she has company.

Marina is number seven.

They never see her face. Marina makes sure of that. Whenever she goes out to perch on a rooftop not far from her open window and locked bedroom door, a hood hides her face; a baggy sweatshirt makes it difficult to determine her gender.

She’s not like some of the other vigilantes, anyways. One, Two, Five, and Nine are much more hands-on, leaving criminals with bruises and broken bones; Three, Four, and Six focus on more organized aspects of crime - gangs and the like - and have often left explosions in their wake. Seven and Eight are the ones who work from a distance and without getting their hands dirty: Marina leaves her victims frozen to walls, but always with a layer of cloth between their flesh and her ice; she knows about prolonged exposure to cold and wishes it on no one. Those who Eight catches always end up in odd places with no way of escape and, in a ridiculously schoolboy-humored manner, occasionally with wedgies. (The very top of the Statue of Liberty, for all its distance from Eight’s purported stomping grounds, seems to be quite the popular dumping spot.)

But other than her  _ modus operandi _ , the thing that really makes Marina different is that she leaves not only criminals in her wake, but healing, too. Everyone involved in a hit of hers ends up in perfect health at the end.

Marina is still living with Adelina. She’s becoming optimistic about the situation. She and Adelina get along well, mostly by staying out of the other’s way, but their interactions are pleasant and rising in frequency. 

With her nighttime activities, Marina can no longer afford to spend hours reviewing what was learned in class (most of which she floats through in an exhaustion-induced daze) with the Internet as her tutor. Eventually she begins to enlist Adelina in her studies, and it turns out that even though Adelina’s a kindergarten teacher, the woman has a minor in industrial engineering.

Calculus is Adelina’s  _ bitch _ .

Marina has yet to meet anyone - other than Adelina - who could probably teach derivatives to a nine-year-old.

It’s exactly five months after her sixteenth birthday that Adelina calls for her on a Saturday morning before ten. It’s been a silent agreement of theirs for ages: Marina gets up for school without being pushed and goes to bed at a reasonable hour (though that has long since gone out the window - quite literally, because Marina tends to leave via window), and Adelina doesn’t wake her up before noon on the weekends. It’s simple and it works. Marina can’t help but feel irritated. In a fit of pettiness, she decides to forgo putting on actual clothing, because that’s what counts as rebellion for Daylight Marina.

Adelina raises an eyebrow at her Hello Kitty pajamas, but doesn’t say anything else on that subject. Marina’s always admired Adelina’s effortless grace, and it’s showing now; the woman is honest-to-God slurping down coffee, making noises strikingly similar to a vacuum cleaner, slumped at the kitchen table with her hair unbrushed, and somehow it still looks elegant.

“Sit down,” she says. “We need to talk about this.”

_It’s too damn_ _early for this, whatever it is_ , Marina thinks as her mouth stretches in an involuntary yawn, and some of it must show in her expression, but Adelina’s only response is to raise one perfectly poised eyebrow.

There is no escape. Marina slumps into the chair.

“You’ve been here for a long time,” Adelina says, and Marina’s instantly on guard. The eyes of the woman across the table are gentle and that terrifies her, completely and utterly, because that’s how people look when they tell you that the nice couple’s adoption request has fallen through or you’re moving across the country to the Big Apple, and good luck with that. She can’t help the stiffening of her shoulders.

“Thus, I feel pretty justified in asking you this.”

Marina closes her eyes in preparation for the blow.

“Could you tutor one of my students?”

Her eyes fly open and probably bug out of her head, because wow, that’s so not what she was expecting. “Um,” she says, verbose as always, mind trying to keep up with the situation. “Uh.”

“Her name is Ella,” Adelina goes on. “Technically, she’s not my grade. You know. Not in kindergarten. She’s twelve, actually, but you know I run the Gifted program in mathematics,” and Marina didn’t actually know that, doesn’t remember being told that, but whatever, “And Ella is pretty far ahead of her classmates. Her father’s approached me about upping the demands of her curriculum. The thing is, I don’t have enough time to do a proper class just for Ella, because she’s doing Precalc and even the rest of the gifted kids are only doing Geometry, at most, and I have to deal with my kids on top of the Gifted stuff…” She shakes her head, dropping her eyes to the grain of the wood table, massaging the bridge of her nose with one hand. “I told him I’d see whether I could find someone to tutor her, maybe a few times a week. You’d be paid, of course. Her father said since he pays for Ella’s school already he doesn’t mind paying for a tutor.” Here Adelina seems to run out of steam. Her gaze focuses on Marina.

“I’m not good at math,” Marina points out, shifting in her chair. “I need your help all the time with homework.”

“You are taking a college-level course, you know,” Adelina says, sounding amused. “So maybe you’re not going to win any Fields in the next ten years, but you’re not  _ bad _ at math. I think you’d be a pretty good teacher.”

“Ah,” Marina says intelligently.

“I’ve collected the typical high school course,” Adelina says, suddenly all business again as she yanks out a two-inch binder from God-knows-where and plunks it down on the table. “This is what Ella would cover if she were actually taking the class, but since this is outside of the classroom, it’s not as time-sensitive.”

Marina pulls it towards her, flips it open, eyes flicking over the pages. “I remember this,” she says, more to herself than anything. She glances up at Adelina. “I’d be fine teaching someone, I think.”

“Great,” Adelina says, flashing a big smile. “Your first meeting with her is in half an hour at the community center. You’d better hurry.”

“Oh,  _ shit! _ ”

“I hope you don’t use that language in front of an impressionable middle-schooler, Marina.”

Marina gives herself a pat on the back because - no thanks to Adelina - not only is she Not Late, she’s actually Moderately Early. This is an achievement.

As her breath catches and settles, Marina surveys the quieter section of the community center; it’s got tables and chairs set up, and it’s a pretty popular place for informal academic meetings. Adelina told her that Ella would be around twelve, but there are at least half a dozen people here who fit that very vague description. She studies them, head tilted, trying to figure out whether any of them are waiting for her.

“Are you Marina?” The voice from below her elbow makes Marina start with surprise. She controls her reflexes and most definitely does not spin around. Instead, she turns, calm and collected as she can manage.

The first thought to cross her mind is that there’s really no way Ella is twelve. She also feels okay about not spotting her before, because Marina was filtering out anyone younger than ten, and Ella could barely pass for nine. It must be kind of hard, she reflects, to be not only significantly more intelligent than your peers, but look several years younger. The top of the girl’s head barely reaches Marina’s ribcage, and Marina is no giant herself. She’s brown-haired, brown-eyed, much like Marina herself, but Ella’s pretty obviously white, and Marina’s skin looks dark next to the freckled paleness of Ella’s face.

“Yes,” Marina responds, feeling awkward. She wonders whether she should bend down to Ella’s level, or whether that would just be weird.

In the end it’s too late for that to matter anyways, because Ella turns her head to the right and Marina follows her gaze. A man’s approaching them, and that mustache is actually really impressive. This is probably Ella’s father, she concludes.

“Hello, Marina,” he says, holding out a hand for her to shake. His grip is firm compared to her own weak clasp. “I’m Ella’s father. Call me Crayton.”

Sometimes she feels like she might fall off the face of the planet. Her nighttime activities make her feel inhuman, less than a person. You can only see so many horrible things before it makes you a little bit insane. 

Ella becoming an anchor against the insanity is… unexpected, to say the least, but the girl is logical, in a way Marina’s life isn’t anymore. Marina can follow Ella’s train of thought, and, she thinks with no little amusement, polynomials are now what keep Marina going day after day.

She’s been doing a lot more of the “hysterical laughing” thing. The most constant thought in her head, replacing  _ is anyone judging me _ , is the glorious sentiment of  _ fuck my life _ .

It’s a gorgeous January night, and Marina’s breath is the only thing moving. She watches the plumes of warmth dissipate into the night, calmer than she’s been in months, in that state of perfect awareness and comfort, where she feels like she could stay forever. Lately this is the sensation she lives for. It’s a balance her life lacks, most of the time. She counts her heartbeats: one, two, three-four, five, six, seven-eight, nine, ten…

Something moves behind her.

Marina doesn’t spin around, because she’s gotten better at controlling her impulses; logic tells her she’s on a roof six stories up, and it’s more likely to be wind than anything noteworthy. She’s discovered that spending a night tensing every five seconds is even more exhausting than normal. So she doesn’t jump, she doesn’t start, and her heart’s skipping is the only thing affected. She turns.

There’s someone behind her with a cheshire smile and Marina’s automatic reaction is an ice-coated fist in the figure’s face.

“Hey, hey!”

Marina doesn’t pull her punch, but it doesn’t matter anyways, because the person - male, young or small from the stature - vanishes and Marina  _ knows _ she didn’t blink. He was just there, until he wasn’t. It rings every alarm bell she’s got. Shooting up from a crouch, her legs tense, Marina scans the rooftop, alert as she can be at three in the morning. For her, that’s pretty damn alert.

“Don’t kill me!”

This time Marina spins, pinpointing the voice at her five o’clock, but she doesn’t attack. There’s a streetlight to her back. With the glow cast over her shoulder, his features are defined, if colorless; there are shadows cast across his face from a high brow and sharp nose, hands hovering by his ears, eyes wide and glimmering with mirth. Really, no one should look that amused when they are in very real danger of getting stabbed with an icicle.

And then she thinks back to how he vanished in a split second, and wonders whether she poses a danger at all.

He shifts his weight backwards, away from her, speaks quickly and softly. “Look, I was just in the area, and I saw you, and I wanted to say hi.”

It’s so earnest, so genuine, that she wants to believe it, but that’s a nostalgic part of her. The part of herself that’s been keeping her alive for months says that only an idiot would take this crazy, disappearing, roof-climbing lunatic at his word. Marina gives him a look, even though she doubts he can see her face as well as she can his (what with her night vision and all), and hopes that her body language screams doubt.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, relenting. “I might have been looking for you.” His shoulders slump. He’s very open with his body language, this mystery stalker. “You’re a bit hard to find, Seven.” And before she can react - to push him off the roof, most likely - he sticks his hand out. “I’m Eight.”

Marina doesn’t move to shake his hand, but that’s because she’s mentally reviewing everything she knows about the vigilante that came after her. He covers an area about a mile and a half to the north. “You’re the one who leaves people on the Statue of Liberty.”

“That’s me,” he responds, smile no less genuine than it was before. He’s a very good actor, this other vigilante, because her heart rate is slowing despite her head screaming for her to run. “I teleport them up there. It’s a lot cleaner than tossing them into a police station, you know?”

Marina winces in sympathy. She’s aware that Nine tends to drop his victims into the lobby of his local police station without a care for the broken bones he gives them. Marina doesn’t have a very high opinion of him - or of any of the others who leave people injured in their wake. “True.”

Their conversation stalls. Marina begins contemplating escape routes. Eight might be a teleporter, but Marina knows these streets. He doesn’t stand a chance.

“So…” Eight trails off, rocking back onto his heels as he looks at her, hands out to keep him balanced. “You’re kind of a hero. I mean, I guess we both are, but…”

“No,” Marina says, cutting him off with no remorse. The panic building up in her gut makes sure of that. “I’m not. You might be. But I’m just a vigilante.” She remembers hearing about Eight’s escapades. He’s done more work than her, even though Marina’s been working longer. Marina won’t admit it here, but she respects Eight, in a way she doesn’t respect all the others.

“You are!” Eight perks up immediately, like arguing is giving him something to latch onto. “You kind of inspired me, you know? I’d been considering it before, but… you pushed me. You weren’t as violent.” He shrugs, like  _ no big deal _ . “And I was thinking you might be up for some hero-ing together sometime. You know, you, me, freezing people to the top of national landmarks. The date every girl wants, am I right?” 

His grin is so heartfelt that Marina would almost believe him, but she hasn’t gotten this far by trusting every stranger she encounters, and she’d like to think she’s smarter than that. Eight makes good company, that’s for sure, and listening to him beats sitting alone on a rooftop. She’s still not about to tell him all her secrets.

“I don’t want to be a hero,” Marina tells him, voice perfectly even, but she feels like the lie is crawling out of her skin, writing itself all over her face. “Why? Why would you?”

It’s that idea, the concept of someone secret who helps others not for the attention, but for the simplicity of good, that keeps her moving. Marina would love to be a hero. It’s just that there are so many things that she’s not and never will be - not brave, or righteous, or trying to make up for past wrongs. She’s just a foster kid with a gift for healing and someone too stupid to let professionals take care of their city. She’s not a hero and she never will be.

“Heroes never die,” Eight says, tilting his head back to the sky, speaking more to the cold air than to Marina herself. “I want to leave a legacy.”

She doesn’t respond. It seems ridiculous to her, anyways. Of course they die. Heroes are more likely to die, aren’t they? That’s not what he meant, but it’s how Marina thinks.

After a moment, Eight drops his gaze and looks at her. It’s not the cheerful expression of earlier that she sees on his face. Instead, he looks far older than he should, like he’s seeing right through her, exposing everything she hides from herself. He looks almost disappointed. “I guess I’ll see you around, Seven,” he finally says, and then he’s just  _ gone _ .

“See you, Eight,” Marina whispers to nobody.

It’s been only five days since Marina encountered Eight, but something else is (figuratively) shaking her world, because every local news station is abuzz with the fact that One was found dead with a blade through her heart.

The police aren’t supposed to release her name, but someone does anyways, and it turns out she’s the daughter of Mayor Hilde. It’s kind of a scandal, the fact that the mayor’s daughter was a law-breaking vigilante. The woman’s coming under a lot of fire. It angers Marina that people are talking about reelections and pressing charges when a teenager is dead. She’s also curious, if she wants to be blunt with herself, because they’re saying that One was the person responsible for a miniature earthquake in Queens that brought a bank down on the heads of four people trying to rob it, but no one has figured out  _ how _ . Was One like her, like Eight, someone with unexplained abilities? And if she was, how many people like them are out there? How long will it take for criminals with powers like theirs to attack the city?

And of course, there’s the obvious question: who killed her? That’s what scares Marina most, because One could take care of herself, had been roaming the streets for longer than any of them, and she was still brought down with little to no struggle. If One had had any warning, she would have done something drastic, like at the bank, maybe reduced the neighborhood to rubble. She hadn’t. Either she was taken out by professionals, or she truly wasn’t expecting the attack. It reeks of a targeted, purposeful murder.

“You’ve been distracted a lot, Marina,” Ella tells her one day as they slave over the law of cosines, intuition far greater than twelve years reflected in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Marina responds, but it’s a lie and both of them know it.

Two and Three are the next to be found dead. There’s panic in the city at this point, because if someone’s going around killing off crime-fighters, then anyone could be next. Cut down the strong and you conquer the many. It’s a good strategy, and Marina has to admire the killer for that.

Two was a redheaded girl from a well-off family in Brooklyn.

Three was a boy named Hanu, and he was Marina’s lab partner last year in chemistry, but was also in all of her classes. Three’d been around for a long time, would’ve been doing vigilante work while they were learning about acids and bases. She didn’t notice a thing.

Marina grieves for him in private; the school won’t hold a memorial service for a boy who was murdered before he’d even begun to live, saying it’s too controversial. In response she sculpts a lily of pure ice and leaves it on what used to be his desk in English. It’s gone by the time she gets to school the next morning.

It turns out that Four and Six have been working together for a while. Marina learns this on an otherwise unremarkable night when she runs into the two of them as they methodically take out a drug ring. She lurks on a fire escape, watching them as they beat the criminals into submission.

Four lights his hands on fire and drives them into a corner until he can break a wrist or two. The cracking of bone and pained cries makes Marina wince, but after they fall unconscious Four kneels next to them and Marina can tell they’re healing. Like her, Four has some sort of healing ability, though he seems far less preoccupied with avoiding pain in the first place. Marina leans out a little more, trying to get a closer look.

Six vanishes. At first Marina thinks her mind is playing tricks on her - with the shadows it’s easy to fade until you’re practically invisible - but no, she sees Six simply disappear under the direct light of a streetlamp. Poof, gone. And then, when the remaining criminals start getting pushed around by an unseen force, Marina knows it’s Six.

There are a dozen men, all armed, but Four and Six get rid of the guns quickly. After that it’s only two minutes until they’re all down - unconscious, yes, but with no injuries graver than a concussion. Marina lets out a breath, sitting back on the fire escape, pulling herself back into the shadows.

Six looks up.

Marina is fast, yes, but not like these two. They’ve been at this for longer than she has (Four, by at least three months, but Six it’s only two weeks) and there’s a reason she does things from afar. Physical confrontation, while something she can handle, is not her forte.

She only makes it up half a staircase before they’ve caught up to her.

Marina does not want a repeat of what happened with Eight. She doesn’t want to somehow disappoint these people. She doesn’t want to be known as the weak one who doesn’t believe in heroes; having one person think that of her is one too many. She stops, gathering her dignity. She does not turn.

“Who are you?” Four calls.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Six’s voice is calculating. “C’mon, Four, I know you had to have done some of your research.”

“Uh,” says Four, sounding utterly lost. “You’re assuming I remember these things.”

There’s a clang. From Four’s yelp, Marina would guess that he’s become well-acquainted with the railing, courtesy of Six.

“Yeah,” Marina interjects. She turns and faces them, bracing her elbows on the railing, letting her stance relax and forcing a mix of levity and confident seriousness into her tone. They’re both masked where Eight wasn’t. It makes it easier, makes it feel less like she’s talking to another person. “I’m Seven. And I’m going to assume you two are Four and Six.”

“How’d you guess that?” Four doesn’t sound suspicious, just curious.

Both Marina and Six look at him like he’s an idiot. Marina’s better at hiding it, though, or is at least more polite. “Really?” asks Six. “ _ Really? _ ”

“It’s pretty obvious,” Marina says, amused despite the unplanned encounter. The two of them interact like siblings. “Both of you handle organized crime. It was pretty obvious that this was a drug thing from, you know, the cocaine. And according to the newspapers, Four, you leave behind a lot of scorch marks, and Six never gets seen, which works with the invisibility thing she has going on. The reporters have been pretty accurate with that stuff so far. For me, at least.”  _ Not for Eight _ , she doesn’t say. The reporters think Eight has superspeed.

Six gestures at Marina, like,  _ there you go, Four, you’re the only idiot here _ . “Yes. Exactly. I like you,” she adds, obviously directing the last part at Marina.

“Uh,” she says. “Thanks.” She doesn’t trust these two, obviously, but their banter sets her more at ease than Eight’s tendency for monologues. Or maybe she’s just more comfortable on the streets now.

“So,” Four says. “I guess we’ll get going now. Get out of your ‘territory’, or whatever.” The air quotes are obvious in his tone. “Good seeing you? Keep stopping bad guys?” He gives her finger guns, turns, and stomps down the stairs. The noise of metal almost obscures the groans of the waking goons below. “C’mon, Six, we should tie them up or something before they get their guns.”

“I thought you melted those.” Six sounds irritated. “I told you to melt those.”

“No, you didn’t!”

“I did.” Six sighs. “See you around, Seven.”

Marina responds with a polite nod, watching the two of them head back down – still bickering, and it’s kind of adorable, honestly – before climbing the stairs in the opposite direction. There’s no question in her mind: that encounter went much better than it had with Eight.

It turns out that Ella’s dad, Crayton, is a police officer. When Marina first hears that she winces inwardly. The police department isn’t fond of vigilantes, and Marina can’t blame them; some are violent and do worse than the police would. The police force, at least in theory, is held accountable by the law.

(Marina wishes they’d do more investigation into the deaths of One, Two, and Three. Even with the unrest among the public, the police aren’t doing anything different from a normal homicide case. Or, well, what’s looking to be a serial killer case.)

Marina’s prepared to hear the worst about her nighttime activities. But it turns out that Crayton actually supports the vigilantes.

Huh. Well, okay. She’ll take it.

“I can’t say I agree with every single one of their methods,” Crayton tells Marina as they wait for Ella to return from the bathroom after a session. “But for the most part? Sometimes they do things we can’t, find things we can’t, provide justice where we’re powerless. They’re trying to protect this city - just like the rest of us on the force.” He cracks a sideways smile. “Don’t tell my superior I said that.”

Marina laughs and says she won’t. It’d be ironic if she did. (She doesn’t tell Crayton that.)

So, at some point, Marina’s life turned into a comic book. She doesn’t know when this happened, or how this happened, or why this happened.

She does know that she’s not happy about it.

Because now she’s fighting a bunch of aliens in Central Park at two in the morning as they shoot at her with sci-fi laser guns. When they die they explode into foul ash, probably to return to their planet or something. Even their ship is stereotypical: it’s essentially a circular pod on top of these long white legs, with colorful lights and everything. If this gets any more horribly cliché, she’ll get captured by faceless goons and monologued at. Marina doesn’t like monologues.

Still. Just because these aliens seem really stupid doesn’t mean that they can’t cause harm. And lots of property damage.

“Villains these days, am I right?” Eight laughs next to her as they duck behind a tree to avoid a laser blast, because oh yeah, the other vigilantes have also showed up to help, even though it’s technically not anyone’s territory. So thoughtful of them. 

Eight and Marina wince as some kind of blue light scorches the other side of the trunk. Eight rambles on anyways. “No creativity. Always ‘let’s take over the planet and become supreme dictators with the use of my ridiculous doomsday weapon’. What I wouldn’t give for a little variety. Not that I would know a lot about that, but this seems very Saturday morning cartoon to me.”

Five - who can fly, apparently, and Marina keeps telling herself she’ll get over the ridiculousness that is her life, but hasn’t quite succeeded yet - spins past them, knocked off-balance midair, and crashes into a bush. Branches crack like gunshots. It sounds painful. Marina winces in sympathy.

Eight taps her shoulder, and they carefully peer out from their impromptu shelter.

Four’s easy to spot. It’s dark, and his hands catch fire, so. It’s not rocket science. Six is harder to find, what with the invisibility and all, but Marina thinks she might have something to do with the aliens on the right, who are falling like bowling pins. Wait, no, that might just be Nine. Superspeed actually makes sense for him in a way it doesn’t for Eight.

Some alien aims a gun at their faces and they duck back down.

“We need a plan,” Eight says breathlessly.

Marina kind of wants to punch him, because a) no duh, genius, b) what do you mean by  _ we _ , and c) that line has probably been in every action flick ever. She settles for giving him her best  _ you’re an idiot _ look.

Eight doesn’t look very affected.

Something explodes, and then Six is next to them, not invisible and out of breath and slightly singed. There’s a stench of burning hair, which is both gross and probably hard to explain away. Marina tucks her own ponytail further under her sweatshirt and pulls the hood lower over her face.

“We need a plan,” Five and Six say in unison. Wait, when did Five even get there? Marina looks behind her to see a kid with black face paint forming a mask shape around his eyes. Face paint and clichés? Really?

“Oh my God,” Marina groans, and resists the urge to bang her head against the tree bark.

“You got any ideas, Seven?” Six asks, sharp-edged, and Marina glares at Eight because the asshole’s laughing. Silently, yeah, and maybe it’s hard to tell behind the dollar store mask he picked up since their last encounter, but he’s definitely laughing at her. She can tell. Marina vows revenge…

...sometime later, in a situation where they’re not being attacked by aliens trying to take over the world.

“I’m voting for hit them all really hard, personally,” Nine cuts in. Right, Nine’s here, Four’s here; it’s a regular team huddle. 

The “team huddle” also makes for a very good target. Marina grits her teeth as one shot cuts too close.

“We keep them away from civilians,” Six is saying. “Somehow. But that’s our priority.”

No one asks who made Six boss, because she’s right. “I’ll get on that,” Eight says casually. “I can only get civilians, oh, a block or so away, but that should be enough, as long as they run.” 

They might not run, because civilians can be  _ really freaking stupid _ , but no one says so. 

“Good,” Six says, and nods like the world suddenly makes sense. “Right, Eight, you do that, and the rest of us can try to…” She wrinkles her nose, and it’s kind of cute. “...distract them.”

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Nine says, and then he’s gone, running off towards the aliens as they retreat into their ship.

Wait. As the aliens what?

Nine goes for the door before someone can tell him that’s a horrible idea, but it closes too fast and he hits it, bouncing off onto the grass. A low rumble grows into an explosion, and they all watch as the ship starts to shudder even as it lifts off the ground, legs withdrawing into the pod-shaped center.

“What the fuck,” Four shouts over the noise. “What the actual fuck.”

It’s a pretty good summary of Marina’s thoughts right now.

Nine runs back to them as the roar reaches a crescendo. Marina ducks, closing her eyes as the heat wave washes over her. Then the ship’s gone, almost like it was never there. Except that there are a whole lot of burned trees and destroyed bushes.

Oh, yeah, there’s also the circular symbol burned into the grass right below where the ship was. A regular crop circle in the middle of New York City.

“I hate my life,” Marina says out loud. Eight just laughs at her.


End file.
